


Never Any Good At Goodbyes

by shinyjenni



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 02:55:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyjenni/pseuds/shinyjenni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ace doesn't want to say goodbye to Shou Yuing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Any Good At Goodbyes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ladymercury_10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladymercury_10/gifts).



Ace had never objected to the Doctor's policy of making himself scarce in short order post-adventure - after the world was saved, but before the dust had settled, for preference. Quite the opposite, in fact: she had no desire to stick around for debriefings, questions, people swearing eternal gratitude, parades, medals, and so on. (OK, she wouldn't have entirely objected to a medal or two, if she was being honest with herself.) But this time... this time it seem natural to stay late into the evening, talking and laughing with their new and old friends as the light faded and failed.

Eventually the party began to wind down. Ace was sitting alone at the end of the Brigadier's garden when Shou Yuing sat down next to her in the darkness, passing her another lemonade and bumping shoulders with her affectionately. They sat in companionable silence, sipping their drinks.

"You'll be off soon, I expect," said Shou Yuing neutrally, after a while.

"Yeah," Ace replied awkwardly, "suppose so." She stared fixedly at a point between her feet. "Come with us," she said abruptly.

"Why?" asked Shou Yuing.

"Er, it'll be fun?" Ace said, a little off balance: she hadn't been expecting that response, immediate and serious. Hadn't been thinking ahead at all, really. "You get to see some pretty wicked stuff, travelling with the Professor."

"No," said Shou Yuing gently. "I get all that. I'm sure it would be brilliant. But I want to know why you want _me_ to come with you."

"Um," said Ace, articulately. Shou Yuing was very close.

"Why me?" asked Shou Yuing again. Her breath was warm on Ace's cheek.

"Um, I think..." began Ace, with no idea of how that sentence was going to end.

" _Don't_ think," said Shou Yuing, very low, and kissed her.

"Is that why?" she asked, after a moment.

Ace couldn't see Shou Yuing, but that didn't matter: she could hear the hope in her voice. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah."

"Well then," said Shou Yuing, and she took Ace's hand. "When do we leave?"

*

The Doctor was a little surprised to have acquired a new companion, but he'd never really been the type to turn one down. And even if he had, he could see how Ace lit up around her, and that happiness was not something he was prepared to deny her. So the three of them rattled around the universe together for a while. As Ace promised, they saw unimaginable wonders (and their share of horrors, too, but let's not dwell on those. Ace and Shou Yuing blew most of them up, anyway), and had wild, joyful adventures, until eventually Shou Yuing decided that it was time for her to go home. The Doctor delivered her safely back to her life (more or less when she'd left it), and let Ace cry out her heartbreak undisturbed.

When Ace emerged from her room, face freshly washed, her defiant expression heartbreakingly fragile, the Doctor was sipping a cup of tea and tinkering delicately with the console.

"So, Ace," he said kindly, "where shall we go today?"

"Wherever we're needed, of course, Professor," she said, and her voice hardly broke at all.

"Of course," he replied, spinning a dial lightly. "Where else?" And added, half to himself: "Where else, indeed?"


End file.
